Need Atom bomb input…

Gargantua

It’s also important to note that it’s not “just” the B-29 bomber that could have delivered a theoretical nuke.

I’m sure if the Russians or Germans had managed to get a nuke together, they would have used whatever bomber they had that was appropriate. Not every plausible bomber option had a cieling of 31,000 feet.

I bet a B-25 Mitchell, or a father of the night could have delivered fatboy too.

If you deny aa-fire/interceptors against the nuke bomber, you might aswell deny aa-fire against all bombers. As in Axis and Allies the piece doesn’t change.

Nukes should also be able to move 1 space on land. I’m sure if the Germans or Russians had one, they may have moved/used it in place, were things going wrong.

variance

No? How do they work then?

MrMalachiCrunch

Plus….the bombs are much less effective when not detonated as an air burst. Putting it on a ship would result in about 1/2 to 2/3 the effect.

Young Grasshopper

Is the idea here to have multiple Abombs per game? If that’s the case than I agree that my ideas are to overpowering.

variance

Hmmm OK so in axis & allies when you attack with 1 tank its not really 1 tank; it is something like an armoured brigade or a division, and a turn represents something like 3 or 4 months. A bomber doing an SBR isn’t 1 plane dropping a few bombs on Berlin one evening; it’s hundreds of planes bombing all the cities in Germany for 3 or 4 months. So if you do your A-bomb for a turn I would think of it as nuking a whole bunch of stuff (industrial centers, airbases, naval bases, military units) over a 3 or 4 month period with hundreds of planes (or ships) dropping as many A-bombs as are necessary to eradicate the enemy’s capacity to make war (or to breathe). That is what the Americans started doing at Hiroshima and Nagasaki before the Japanese surrendered. Sure they only had a grand total of 3 A-bombs in the arsenal at the time and they used 1 for the alamogordo test, but they had lots more in the pipeline. If Japan didn’t surrender Curtis LeMay would have nuked every last inch of Japan, which more like what I think we are talking about here. They were already pretty good at firebombing those same cities with conventional bombs. Genocidal extermination is the goal of Total War.

Gargantua

In Axis and Allies Doesn’t 1 aircraft carrier or 1 battleship represent just that though?

With the exception that perhaps the screening vessels are included with the “battle group” piece?

IPC’s are supposed to represent man-hours. The cost prohibition of a single nuke therefore is represented accordingly. Else the cost of multiple nukes would be hundreds of IPC’s.

variance

How much does your A-bomb cost?

Der Kuenstler

@variance:

How much does your A-bomb cost?

I’ve got 15 IPCs on it now but 20 IPCs could be better. The high price would assure that a huge amount would not be built. Also, keep in mind that this weapon disappears off the board when used, so you lose IPCs every time you use it, unlike heavy bombers, which can be reused over and over. Players will also likely use it on areas where the enemy has high concentrations of units that will be killed, so that they lose more IPCS than it cost you to drop it - this would limit its use also.

variance

Oh OK. I thought it would be a more expensive item and would need to get the tech for it first (more expense). If its a more accessible item then the yield should be less.

“Total War” is a term that refers more to what went on between Germany and Russia, or maybe between Japan and China. The Holocaust was a good example of it. (By the way, you people should know that about two thirds of the stuff I post on here are jokes).

ossel

I think a simpler option (and I think this has been proposed before) is to make it like a super-heavy SBR, where it does, say, 4 or 5 D6 of damage to facilities and gets 1 or 2 D6 of hits against ground units.

So if there are 4 inf, 2 tanks, 3 fighters in a zone, and the attacker rolls a 5, he would have to allocate 5 hits (remove 4 inf and 1 tank).

This method avoids the ZOMG NUKE ERRRTHING mentality of destroying all units and facilities in a tt.

variance

My understanding of that term comes from a book called “War” by Gwynne Dyer that I read something like 20 years ago. It was a TV series too I think. In that context it referred to complete mobilization of all resources for war, so that defeating the enemy meant obliterating all of the enemy’s resources. That’s a phenomenon that emerged in the early 20th century once humanity actually developed the technology to potentially kill off whole races or nationalities of people, with no boundaries between civilian and military targets. In the case of the Holocaust, Hitler waged war against a people who didn’t even have a state of their own or any military at all; nevertheless they were targeted for extermination in his racial war. Stalin did stuff like that too, like instigating the famine in Ukraine. British and American “strategic” bombing of civilians is consistent with that line of thinking. Anyway, I’m not a military person.

Anyway, if you’re going to have nuclear weapons in the game you really do need to drop the pretense of them being some kind of surgical tool. The A-bomb is an indiscriminate terror weapon that murders massive numbers of innocent civilians with really very little military usefulness beyond that threat. A house rule for nukes should be couched in terms of genocide, which is their only real purpose.

Hey, y’know what would be fun? An anti-dark matter H bomb technology that is so powerful that it blows up the entire WORLD! Everybody dies but the first one to deploy it wins, sort of.

variance

Hitler and Stalin did it on a much larger scale, but murder is murder. It’s OK if I don’t understand it.

ossel

Anyway, if you’re going to have nuclear weapons in the game you really do need to drop the pretense of them being some kind of surgical tool. The A-bomb is an indiscriminate terror weapon that murders massive numbers of innocent civilians with really very little military usefulness beyond that threat. A house rule for nukes should be couched in terms of genocide, which is their only real purpose.

I agree with you that in WWII (and less so as the weapons became more sophisticated in the Cold War), nuclear bombs were more of a psychological (you used the word “terror”) weapon than a tactical one. After all, Japan didn’t surrender because their industrial facilities were irreparably crippled from the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was because they feared further attacks.

I do think that a house rule that implements atom bombs should account for this fear (perhaps an instant surrender mechanism?).

However I think you go too far in stating that the A-bomb is an “indiscriminate” weapon used for “genocide.” The bombs used on Japan had very specific targets, with very specific objectives. From atomicarchive.com:

Some of the important considerations [for target selection] were:

1. The range of the aircraft which would carry the bomb.
2. The desirability of visual bombing in order to insure the most effective use of the bomb.
3. Probable weather conditions in the target areas.
4. Importance of having one primary and two secondary targets for each mission, so that if weather conditions prohibited bombing the target there would be at least two alternates.
5. Selection of targets to produce the greatest military effect on the Japanese people and thereby most effectively shorten the war.
6. The morale effect upon the enemy.

These led in turn to the following:

1. Since the atomic bomb was expected to produce its greatest amount of damage by primary blast effect, and next greatest by fires, the targets should contain a large percentage of closely-built frame buildings and other construction that would be most susceptible to damage by blast and fire.
2. The maximum blast effect of the bomb was calculated to extend over an area of approximately 1 mile in radius; therefore the selected targets should contain a densely built-up area of at least this size.
3. The selected targets should have a high military strategic value.
4. The first target should be relatively untouched by previous bombing, in order that the effect of a single atomic bomb could be determined.

variance

@ossel:

6. The morale effect upon the enemy.

shock and awe?

variance

Because i think i understand it and you don’t. But its ok if we disagree. Anyway I’ll stop now.

Gargantua

Bla bla bla.

I didn’t read anything on this page because it had nothing to do with house rules.

Yavid

@Gargantua:

Bla bla bla.

I didn’t read anything on this page because it had nothing to do with house rules.

LMAO!!! that would have been helpful had I read the conversation backward starting here and ending at the top of the page.

crusaderiv

Atomic bomb rules is useless…that’s it that all…

Der Kuenstler

@crusaderiv:

Atomic bomb rules is useless…that’s it that all…

The Atomic bomb was in WWII - this is a WWII game. How is it useless? I’d say your comment is what is useless.

Yavid

Here’s an idea seeing as Berlin was captured and Japan was never captured (thus Axis and Allies game not over) why not let an Atomic only be able to had to VC and for the next round of play that VC counts has controlled by the attacker?

Need Atom bomb input…

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